Dark Ages: Bulgaria Under Ottoman Domination

After the tragic fall down of Bulgarian Kingdom, the Christian Europe begin to recognize the danger of the Islam invasion. In response to a crusade preached by Pope Boniface IX a French-led army of 10,000 joined a Christian army under King Sigismund of Hungary. The crusaders marched to the relief of Bulgarian, Armenian, Georgian, Greek and other Christians abysmally oppressed by Islamic invaders. On 22 September 1396, at Nicopolis they met the Ottoman army and its Serbian allies in the dramatic battle of Nicopolis. Ignoring the advice of the Hungarian King, the Crusaders charged the Turks and were in turn smashed by the Ottoman and Serbian heavy cavalry. The defeat of 1396 blew away the last hope of Bulgarian people for delivery. Thus, this year is considered as the year when Bulgaria tumbles down under the oppressive Ottoman domination for almost 5 centuries.

The pre-history of the Ottoman Turks (after the name of the dynasty of their first ruler Osman), proceeded for centuries in Central Asia. Driven out of there by the Mongolian-Tartars, according to some sources in the 13th century they, numbering about 50,000, settled within the borders of the ephemeral and disintegrating nomadic empire of the Seljuks to whom they were related. Their small Islamic state in north-western Anatolia swelled rapidly at the expense of the Byzantine territories in Asia Minor a large part of whose population they succeeded in assimilating. Instead of storming Constantinople as many of their predecessors had done, they went round it and set foot on the Balkan Peninsula in the middle of the 14th century (immediately after the plague epidemic that had raged in the whole of Europe, decimating two thirds of the population in some western countries). After gaining a foothold in the Balkans, they made Edirne their capital. That was a real threat to the population of the peninsula and they put up stubborn resistance. It was after fifty years of constant attacks and bloodsheds coupled with stratagems and combinations vis-a-vis the disunited feudal rulers that they conquered Bulgaria and headed west. Meanwhile, they seized Constantinople in 1453 and made it their capital. The fact that Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) considered himself successor to the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire and proclaimed himself Caesar was evidence of their growing appetites. Their campaigns of conquest in the west were stopped at the gates of Vienna. Thus Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbs, Albanians, Ukrainians, Armenians and Arabs remained in Ottoman bondage for several centuries. After taking Egypt and Syria in 1517, the Sultans also assumed the title of caliphs.

During the fall of Constantinople the representatives of the clerical elite of the Byzantine Empire headed for the West taking along valuable ancient literature. Because the Ottoman Empire had imposed control over the traditional sea and land merchant routes to the Asian continent, the Western countries encouraged the search for new trading routes . What was achieved surpassed all expectations: new continents were discovered, new routes to India were found and new colonial empires of capitalist type appeared that afterward directed there expansion also at the Ottoman empire.

What remained from the long rule of the Ottoman sultans was the memory of the retrograde education system (medreses) that fettered the spiritual development of their people, of the ruthless atrocities committed by them and the destructive wars that followed one another. The countless tax registers developed by Ottomans, unlike the Arab caliphs, for example, who also ruled over part of Spain for seven centuries, and of the Great Mongols, who ruled over part of India for nearly a century, but patronized the sciences and the arts and encouraged and facilitated the establishment of important cultural centres, only encouraged the corruption, bribery and discrimination. The resources obtained from the Vassal States enabled the Ottoman upper crust to keep their own people in obedience and patriarchal oriental backwardness. The decline of the empire was precipitated by the national- liberation movements of the peoples ruled by them as well as by the incessant aggressive wars. As a result of the successful anti-imperialist liberation movement headed by, Kemal Ataturk, the modern Republic of Turkey was founded.

On the eve of the Ottoman occupation, the population of Bulgaria split into two kingdoms and two independent feudal areas, numbered, according to rough estimates, about 2,500,000 people. It is assumed that immediately after the establishment of Ottoman power it was reduced by half - some part of the Bulgarians perished in the course of the war, others were taken captive and sold in slavery.

From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century the Bulgarian population, which was composed primarily of peasants, was placed in the conditions of feudal oppression much graver than in previous times. The land was regarded as the property of the supreme ruler, the Sultan, who distributed it among his subordinate administrators (judges), war veterans and servicemen of the reserve, and to the so-called spahi - regular servicemen all of whom were granted the rights of feudal landowners for life. It was the duty of the landed officers and servicemen to report in times of war in full battle trim at the places of muster in various districts (sandjaks).

The Bulgarian lands became part of the region governed by the Roumelibeilerbei with a seat first in the town of Edirne and later in Sofia, including the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The lands with a predominantly Bulgarian population were covered (in wholeor in part) by the sandjaks of Silistra, Nikopol, Vidin, Pasha (the regions of Edirne, Elhovo and Plovdiv), Chirmen (the Sub-Balkan valley), Kyustendil, Ohrid and Sofia. The Bulgarian Patriarchate was abolihed; the Christian Bulgarians were subordinated to an alien church, i.e. the Constantinople Patriarch, who appointed mainly Greeks to Bulgarian bishoprics.

The Ottoman military-feudal system was influenced by Arab, Persian, Turkic, Mongolian and Byzantine political practices. This system of government headed by the sultan (padishah) accorded primary role to the estste of the ulems (theologians and legislators upholding theocracy). Overcoming duality in the political structure and the unification of these two forces into a unitary system of the "realm of the faith" was achieved through the proclamation of the sultan as "Allah's shadow on Earth" and by including most of the ulems into the state apparatus. Unity and centralization in the large empire was maintained mainly by extra-economic methods, primarily through extremely developed oppressive social and political institutions. Prime importance was accorded to Islam (the word means obedience, submissiveness) - to that last offshoot of monotheism, which had become a world religion. The Ottomans claimed that it was they who spread the pure, orthodox so called Sunni Islam contrary to the Shiite branch of Islam which had established itself in Iran. (By this, they also justified their numerous conflicts with Iran in the 16th and 17th centuries). As the scholar of Ottoman Turkey M. Mayer points out, the sultans "devoted a great deal of attention to the spreading of the Muslim religion in the newly conquered European territories, both by forcible Islamisation of the population and by creating numerous faith-propagating centres (imarets) on the basis of vakif property". The aim was to inculcate obedience and submissiveness to the supreme authority, given the existing economic fragmentariness and ethnic and religious diversity of the subjects in the Empire. Naturally, the results of these efforts fell far short of expectations. It was a system under which the central authorities were mainly interested in the efficient functioning of the fiscal institutions.

Every one of the feudal lords in the Empire was entitled to a portion of the incomes of his subordinate households and the fees on the issued certificates (tapis) through which the households acquired plots of land (the fee equalled half of the yearly revenue from the land). The "owners" thus bound to the soil had to conform to the preferences of the lord as to what to plant on the soil and had no right to leave their feudal lord.

The service feudal estates (spahiliks) in many respects resembled the Byzantine pronia. Naturally, the Ottoman system of land ownership sustained substantial transformations, especially at the turn of the 19th century when in the regions suitable for industrial crops new estates called cifliks were formed. They were subject to lawful sale and purchase, could employ hired labour and produced crops for the market (e.g. in north-western Bulgaria, in the Macedonia area and in Thrace). That was a process similar to the "enclosures" in 16th and 17th century England as a result of which the land was expropriated from the peasants who became hired hands to the new owners or joined the urban plebs.

In any case, the Ottoman state developed best those of its functions which most helped plunder the population. The heaviest tax collected by the state from the non-Muslim people was the poll-tax (ciziye). Every non-Muslim from the age of 15 to 75 had to pay only for figuring in the lists of the Sultan's subjects (such lists were made once in 30 years). According to a 1736 decree, the wealthier Christians paid 10 grosh each, the middling ones - 5 grosh and the poorer ones - 2.5 grosh (one grosh at that time bought 13 loaves of bread of 750 g each).

The local lord was paid by the non-Muslim households a land tax (ispenc) which was greater than the tax owed by a Muslim household on the same size of land. Another regular obligation of the raya (subjects) towards the feudal lord was the tithe on the produce of the land (usur) - between 1/10 and 1/8 of the yield.

These were the main taxes which were systematically infringed, i.e. they were arbitrarily increased by their collectors, to say nothing of various other levies, fees, fenes and corvee, extraordinary taxes during military campaigns which subsequently became permanent and which burdened the non-Muslim population. In addition to this economic pressure, there were regular campaigns of Islamising the Bulgarian people by force, especially in the Rhodopes and in Northern Bulgaria. A particularly cruel form of oppression was the blood tax (devsirme), levied periodically from the 15th to the 18th century. The Bulgarian families were forced to give up their best male children who were then Turkified and educated in exceptional Muslim fanaticism. They made up the janissary corps and became the mainstay of the Ottoman authorities. Other forms of assimilation included abductions of Christian women who were forced to become wives and mothers of Muslims, the forcible re-settlement of Bulgarians in Anatolia, physical extermination, etc.

Under these conditions, the Bulgarians found refuge-particularly in the initial centuries of Ottoman domination in their traditional commune and also in the local cloister, newly-built or remaining from the past age. Although their state had been abolished and they themselves were reduced to living in primitive conditions, the Bulgarians succeeded in preserving themselves as a nationality. The more stout hearted resorted to armed resistance, fleeing into the mountains. From acts of personal revenge, the haidout movement of rebels became a means of collective self-defence. There were also periodic rebellions and insurrections.

The campaigns against the Ottomans by the rulers of certain Central European states sparked off armed unrest among the Bulgarians but failed to bring about the expected change in the state of affairs. However, it was Russia who became the mainstay of the Balkan Christian population, the Bulgarians included. By the end of the 15th century Russia had already freed itself from Tartar domination.

Cultural and political links between the Bulgarian people and Russia were restored during the 16th century, when the Moscow kingdom had come to stay as the only large, independent state where the Eastern Orthodox religion had survived and struck roots as the official religion. In the words of Priest Philotey of Pskov after the Turks conquered Constantinople, i.e. after 1453, Moscow became the third Rome, 'and a fourth there will never be'. The legendary myth of 'grandfather Ivan' as the personification of protective Russia was widespread among the Bulgarians. The Russo-Turkish wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, some of which were fought on Bulgarian soil, helped confirm the credibility of this legend.

All along economy had forged ahead. Through trade and finance the Ottoman empire worked its way into the Western European economy. European merchandise appeared on the markets of the empire and ports were built for the export of farm products to Western and Central Europe. Many Bulgarians were engaged in this area of trade.

The changes affected the rural areas too, leading to somewhat easier living circumstances. A great number of peasants migrated to the towns, where the Bulgarian element was beginning to gain dominance. The Bulgarians, quick at learning commerce and mastering the crafts, formed their own trade guilds, which had a large membership. The husiness section of the Bulgarians was coming to the fore. Well-off Bulgarians became the proprietors of trading firms, in import and export of goods, organized large-scale stock-breeding or took over the collection of state taxes. The Bulgarians did brisk business on the markets in Central Europe (Hungary, Poland, Walachia and Russia) where full-fledged colonies of Balkan and Bulgarian merchants sprang up.

At home the Bulgarian townsfolk competed with the Greeks and the Walachians for business. The Bulgarian side of the competition was supported hy the peasantry, which was suffering under the arbitrary taxation policy of the Constantinople patriarchy, which controlled, in addition to the Church, the Bulgarian schools where instruction was given in Greek. The Bulgarians longed to exterminate the Greek language and influence in the Bulgarian church, schools and public life. The most outstanding exponent of such endeavours was Father Paissi of Hilendar (1722-1773). He himself came from a village (Bansko, present-day Blagoevgrad district), whose craftsmen and merchants were competing with the Greeks both on the domestic and Austrian markets. Being familiar with the Greek and Serbian national movements (they developed, for a number of reasons, earlier than the Bulgarian) he sat down and wrote a small book called 'Slav-Bulgarian History' (1762), which became a 'popular patriotic gospel' (Prof. Hristo Gandev).

Paissi's book was the result of several decades of uplift, which spread throughout the Central and North - Eastern Balkans, where the population was predominantly Bulgarian. This was an epoch of the re-creation of Bulgaria, known as the Bulgarian national revival.

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